{"id":12027,"date":"2009-08-26T14:15:34","date_gmt":"2009-08-26T14:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/how-to-craft-research-for-japan-culture-matters\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T20:10:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:10:18","slug":"how-to-craft-research-for-japan-culture-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/how-to-craft-research-for-japan-culture-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoe je onderzoek voor Japan doet; cultuur is belangrijk!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SIS<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Many global research firms get trapped in a pitfall in designing the Japan leg of the global research project. “Consistent What and Differing How” is a norm one should always adhere to in global research projects that contain field research across many countries. More often than not, we need to adjust the specifics prescribed at the global level “What” to yield the best result from the research work in Japan. In this series of articles, I will shed a light on how we should deal with the “How” part of the norm to render the Japan leg most effective while keeping the “What” intact. \u00a0Specifically, this article is about focus group research<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Every now and then, when we hold focus group interviews while overseas clients monitoring them beyond the one-way mirror, the clients immediately feel something is different from what they are usually seeing. Specifically, they expect each participant to become open and speak up resulting in bringing out actual feelings and thoughts. However, this is not typically what happens in Japan. What is different?<\/p>\n

People here tend to be less willing to become open in public. As opposed to the “show-and-tell” culture typical in the U.S. where expressing one’s opinions is highly encouraged, in Japan, there has been a traditional inclination toward becoming less talkative in public. This may be because people tend to change their attitude between while they are within their inner circle and while within their outer circle. Obviously, while they are within the former, they become more open and vice versa. In other words, people often become very laconic when they speak out among “strangers.” One of my American friends named it a canned culture!<\/p>\n

I would like to share with you how we have been addressing this cultural “impediment” while trying to elicit their true feelings and thoughts.<\/p>\n

Ice-breaking <\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, this simple but universal approach is effective in Japan as well. People react to something funny and relaxing atmosphere kicks in. This is a warm-up.<\/p>\n

Ignition <\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody tends to want to be the first to express his\/her own thought even if asked. What we often do is to present a point about which people can’t help saying something. For example, if you want to know the pattern of education spending by participants on their children<\/a>, you may want to allude to a group of people who are “enthusiastic” about a certain type of educational spending. Since we have chosen people who are keen on education, each of them should have some clear opinion about it, be it positive or not. That works as an ignition.<\/p>\n

Avoiding biased gravitation <\/strong><\/p>\n

In Japan, people tend to try to reach consensus as early as possible; many scholars suggest that this attitude stems from Japan’s agricultural societal structure where group<\/a> works are always looked for. This is also what we observe in focus group meetings. People tend to gravitate toward one opinion; once a certain position is built, a “snowball” effect often kicks in where people begin to rally around it. This is one of major impediments one should avoid once free-wheeling discussions begin. Although I don’t get into specific tactics to stay away from the end result becoming highly biased because they are pretty common across cultures, the moderator should be very alert on this gravitational force gaining momentum and strike the balance of discussions.<\/p>\n

Bijdragend bedrijf:<\/strong>
\nJapan Research Services. Tokyo, Japan.www.japan-research-services.com
\nContact: Yasu Kanno.yasu.ka@agloballoon.co.jp<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclaimer: Views & opinions are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect SIS International Inc.’s opinions, views and methodologies. Under no circumstances will SIS, it affiliates, successors or assigns be liable for any loss or damage caused by anyone’s reliance on information contained in this web site.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>Veel internationale onderzoeksbureaus raken in een valkuil bij het ontwerpen van het Japanse deel van het internationale onderzoeksproject. "Consistente Wat en Verschillende Hoe" is een norm die altijd moet worden aangehouden in internationale onderzoeksprojecten die veldonderzoek in meerdere landen bevatten. Vaak moeten we de specifieke vereisten op internationaal niveau aanpassen om het beste resultaat te behalen uit het onderzoekswerk in Japan. In deze reeks artikelen zal ik belichten hoe we moeten omgaan met het "Hoe"-gedeelte van de norm om het Japanse deel zo effectief mogelijk te maken en tegelijkertijd het "Wat" intact te houden. Dit artikel gaat specifiek over focusgroeponderzoek.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[298],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81464,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions\/81464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sisinternational.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}